Why Starmer's recognition of a Palestinian state is a poor idea

Above is a video covering the same topic as the headline suggests. In the video, I delve a little deeper into a few things that I won’t cover here. What I want to do with this article is go over my basic argument on why I think Starmer’s announcement that he will formally recognise a state of Palestine in the UN if certain conditions are met is a very poor move.

For a start, I don’t believe recognising a state based on what other states nearby may or may not do is a good idea. Surely, a state recognises another state because it believes it is intrinsically a country unto itself and deserves sovereignty. You either believe that to be the case or you do not - what another state does or does not do should be mostly irrelevant to this. If a statehood is conditional on things that happen outside of it, then it de facto is not a state in my view.

Let’s look at exactly what Starmer has proposed before going any further:

“As part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution.

And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank. Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza. We will make an assessment in September on how far the parties have met these steps.”

It is a very bad idea to essentially blackmail Israel, particularly in this poorly thought out manner. This announcement will annoy the Israeli government and all pro-Israelis across the globe. It comes over as a betrayal of Israel, something Starmer has worked hard and burned a lot of bridges to achieve up until this point (look at the seats Labour arguably lost in 2024 because of Starmer’s pro-Israel positioning). He has burned through a lot of goodwill with a group of people and statesmen that he worked hard to impress, all through this one announcement.

This would be less of an issue if the announcement didn’t also upset pro-Palestinians at the same time. The “From the River to the Sea” crowd are not impressed with this policy and I get why. “There should be caveats placed on recognition of a Palestinian state?” they wail. “Why can’t Starmer just recognise Palestine with no conditions? This is an outrage!”

What Starmer has done here is what he has got into the habit of doing more generally - he has tried to find a compromise position that he hopes everyone can live with, when in fact what’s he’s ended up with is a position that annoys absolutely everyone, save a few true Starmerites he couldn’t possibly lose regardless of what he does. This is what inevitably happens when instead of coming from a place of true belief and conviction, you try and manage competing positions to arrive at a place in the middle.

Before he became prime minister, I thought Keir Starmer’s managerial, technocratic approach would yield results. My thinking was that all we needed was a clever person in a suit to get to the root of our problems and sort them out in the most logical manner possible. The failure of Starmer, watching him flail about using this way of working, has not only changed my view of Starmer but of the managerial, technocratic approach more generally. I now think what we need is someone with some conviction. Someone who is going to take into government a real set of beliefs and ideas. Sadly for the near future of the country, Starmer’s approach will not work - and I don’t think he’s capable of change.